Power umbilicals for deep water applications are commonly used in many offshore installations. Such umbilicals may be subjected to substantial laying and service loads and load combinations, as well as mechanical abrasions. In case of failure, an umbilical needs to be repaired, and this often requires splicing of said umbilical. The deep water application, and the correspondingly high hydrostatic pressure on a subsequent repair/splice joint, prevents such an umbilical from being repaired by simply splicing the power phases with for instance a ferrule. Thus, a full splice of the power phases is needed. Such a full splice requires that a bare section of each of the power phases to be spliced is initially set in a linear orientation with each other. The minimum length of these sections depend on the capacity of the power phase, and may in the case of a high-capacity umbilical reach a total length of more than 8 m. The required length of the bare power phases are due to the splicing area tube (insulation for the bare section of the umbilical which is spliced) which is initially threaded onto one the end of one of the umbilical sections being spliced. During the splicing operation this tube is compressed onto the one umbilical section. After the power phases are spliced the tube is also threaded onto the other umbilical section to cover the whole length of the bare power phase. When applying existing solutions for a full splice, this requirement makes the total length of a common full repair/splice joint too large to be handled by a normal installation vessel, and may in fact make such a repair splice impossible to perform using equipment available today.
In existing solutions for full splicing, the repair/splice joint consists of a rigid longitudinal repair joint housing (or splice housing) having strain terminators connected to each end of said housing. In addition to the repair joint housing and the strain terminators, a common splice assembly further comprises bend restrictors connected to the strain terminators on each side of the rigid repair joint housing. The bend restrictors are made up of multiple interlocking modules enclosing the umbilical. The modules are connected to each other such that only a certain angular displacement is possible between them. Depending on the number of modules in the bend restrictor, the enclosed umbilical will be restricted to a given angular radius.
Consequently, based on the state of the art, a need exists for a solution which provides for a repair splice joint, wherein the rigid section, i.e. the repair joint housing and the connected strain terminators, is much smaller in size.